Start pimping your facemasks, because there is excellent news for swine flu - the potential global pandemic that for about 48 hours back there was desperately in need of a celebrity angle.

As indicated, that decidedly awkward state of affairs has now been remedied, and we can finally begin getting things into perspective. Early verdict? Well, as Martin Lawrence is moved to remark in the world cinema classic Bad Boys 2: this shit just got real.

We all know that a news event doesn't make sense until you work out what it means for people who've been on Big Brother. And reminding us that viral infection is no respecter of status or talent comes the news that Elstree Studios alumni Chantelle Houghton and Chanelle Hayes fear they might possibly have been exposed to the flu in Mexico during a recent ... holiday, would you call it? I'm not sure they needed to book time off.

For all that Chanelle and Chantelle might read as flimsy characters spewed out by Endemol's Random Reality TV Cast Generator, I can assure you that they are very, very real.

And, by God, so are their fears.

If anything, the Daily Star's dispatch on the matter - BB BABES PIG FLU TERROR - underplays them. It emerges during the course of the report that the pair telephoned the Daily Star to give the paper the story before they went to the doctor to get checked out - a sign the World Health Organisation is already suggesting means there is something seriously wrong with you. Fortunately, it isn't swine flu.

Yet, as an instance of tasteful celebrity me-tooism, it can stand proudly alongside Atomic Kitten's interviews concerning their 9/11 trauma (they were staying uptown in a hotel when it happened), and Razorlight's "brush with" polonium 210, the deadly poison that killed Alexander Litvinenko, and which the band in fact came nowhere near. But the BB babes' pig flu terror will never dethrone Lost in Showbiz's personal favourite - claims that Myleene Klass's plane had been "targeted" by the Taliban during a visit to Afghanistan in 2006. "The RAF finally had to scramble a fighter to escort the plane," Myleene told the Sun, leaving readers to wonder whether we might not be doing a bit better in Afghanistan if resources didn't have to be diverted from war to act as flying outriders for former members of Hear'Say.

Back to the present day, though, and it isn't just footballer consorts who haven't got swine flu. "Pete Doherty in swine flu scare?" reads a headline on NME.com. "Or are websites just making the most out of the predicted flu panic?" You tell me, NME.com. You tell me.

Alas, they decline to, but they do point to the fact that Dawn Askham, the Scottish honeymooner who contracted swine flu in Cancun, has a picture of herself with the Babyshambles singer on her Bebo page. This ancient snap has duly caused a plague of completely made-up anonymous sources to emerge from their made-up woodwork to fart out made-up quotes like this one: "Pete's friends are worried he may have the deadly illness. He has got himself clean of drugs, the last thing he needs is this."

Mmm. As for Chantelle and Chanelle, perhaps the best way to protect them is to cloister them somewhere - a situation the form book suggests they would relish. In fact, why not quarantine every celebrity who tries to make swine flu All About Them on an island or in a luxury mansion, then film them around the clock as they attempt to complete a number of tasks to win the prize: one person's supply of Tamiflu?

It would, after all, be just another day at the office for them. Getting cooped up with people you'd cross the street to avoid is what this lot do, and the swine flu angle would merely restore "conflict", the holy grail of reality TV, which of late had been deemed lost to ennui.

In the meantime, for eagle-eyed Star reporters anxious for an "angle" on the possibility of the biggest global outbreak of sickness and death in four decades, here's a story idea for you to cut and paste into your DaYLee NyooSPaYpA in the coming week: Big Brother bosses are drawing up emergency plans in case the global flu pandemic strikes before this summer's show. The top-secret documents detail what to do if a carrier is accidentally released into the house, and inmates can't bitch about the shopping list or whatever because they're sweating blood. A show chief told the Star: "We have to look at all the options, and right now we are working with leading health authorities on the best course of action. The Big Brother house could either be the safest place in the country - or the deadliest."

That's got you started, newshounds. Get one of your ham-pawed monkeys to fill in the rest.